


A Thistle Cannot Grow

by supervillainesses



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: F/F, fluff and angst as usual chums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 11:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10593495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supervillainesses/pseuds/supervillainesses
Summary: “When you tend to a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow.” Harley finds Ivy sleeping on the sofa and a copy of The Secret Garden beside her. Angst ensues.





	

           It was rare to see Ivy asleep. Going, going, going. It seemed she never slept; rising with the sun, and not ending her day until it was long set. Sometimes, she didn’t even come inside from the greenhouse. The number of times Harley had found her asleep at a work bench or curled up messily beside some plant was too high to count. She lost track after the fiftieth. All she knew for certain now was that Ivy was upsettingly light in her arms sometimes, when she carried her back to bed. Eating and sleeping; two things Harley would talk to her about, if she still practiced.

            “Red?” Her words were hardly a whisper. “Red, y’asleep?”

            Of course she was. Only in sleep did Ivy’s facial muscles relax, only in sleep did her shoulders lose tension, only in sleep did she let her mouth hang slack and hands did not subconsciously clench into fists. Pamela Isley had retention issues. Sometimes, she even held her breath; so many things she liked to keep to herself. Harley was still learning what to let Ivy hide away, and what things were necessary to pry into.

            The sofa was such a mundane spot to find Ivy asleep. So ordinary, the sight of it sent a tentative fluttering sensation through Harley’s stomach. She wanted to reach out and touch her, even if it might disturb her sleep. Being after eight, it was likely Ivy would wake soon, anyway.

            _For someone who’s so interested in getting me to care for myself_ , Harley thought huffily, resting on the arm of the sofa and sweeping some of the hair out of Ivy’s face with a fingertip, _Ya’d think she would apply some of that to herself_.

            Hardly sleeping, hardly eating; it was a miracle Ivy was alive at all. Control issues and retention, her playmate’s troubles were so easy to pinpoint, but so hard to soothe.

            A gentle hand wrapped around Harley’s wrist, and promptly thereafter came one of Harley’s favorite parts of the day. Ivy was sickeningly sweet upon first waking and just as sweet right before bed. Her hands became desperate for contact, reaching out for a connection even if her eyes were closed and unseeing.

            “ _Harl_.”

            Just her name, tender and broken and stressed in the right places, shortened and concise and informal, voiced raw and rough and dreamily. Even partially unconscious, Ivy knew how to make Harley swoon.

            Harley lowered herself onto the sofa, between the back of it and Ivy’s warm, cloyingly-scented embrace. Ivy went quickly to work, enveloping Harley in her arms and tucking that head crowned with a golden tangle of hair between her shoulder and cheek. Harley giggled, wrapping Ivy in kind, lightly nipping at the skin just below an ear lightly dusted with freckles.

            “M’sorry,” Harley said without remorse, “did I wake you?”

            “Mm…” Ivy made a sound into Harley’s scalp. “Don’t act like this wasn’t your plan, Harley.”

            Harley chuckled deep in her chest, but quickly covered it in a playful gasp. “Diabolical plans? _Me?_ Red, y’got the wrong gal. I ain’t nothin’ but an innocent little flower, swayin’ in the breeze.”

            “Prettiest poison from prettiest petals,” Ivy stated groggily, nuzzling her nose into Harley’s cheek. “What time is it?”

            “Eight. Missed dinner. Ya fell asleep on the couch again.”

            Ivy shifted herself onto her back, so Harley could lay draped across her. It was better this way; Harley could look up into her face and didn’t feel as squashed. Couch snuggles were a delicate art, and it seemed no position was the same twice. Head on Ivy’s chest, Harley squinted at her, to which Ivy replied with an arched brow in question.

            “What were ya reading?” Harley asked slowly.

            “What makes you think I was reading anything?”

            “Don’t even try and hide it, I know ya were. You only fall asleep on the sofa when you come inside to read something. What was it?”

            Shaking her head, Ivy reached under the pillow her head rested on and pulled out a worn little book. It was pocket-sized, bound in beaten leather so old the lettering on the spine and cover had long been worn away. Pages were dog-eared and were sticking out from tearing away from the binding. It was well loved, and though the title was no longer visible, Harley knew exactly what it was.

            “ _The Secret Garden_?” She rolled her eyes. “You always read that one.”

            As the sleepy edge wore off, Harley could see Ivy’s shoulders hunching back up, feel the hands on her back squeeze into guarded fists, watched as the softness in her expression hardened into something that wasn’t quite as loving. But it was okay. This was just Ivy’s shell. She knew her girl was still there beneath.

            “Always, hm? More fuel to psychoanalyze me, I’m sure, Harl.”

            Harley bit her lip. Parts of Pam didn’t trust her, because of her psychiatric background; even their close friends kept themselves at least partially distanced from Harley, because she was trained to have sharp eyes to dissect and knife her way into secrets and sicknesses even they may not know existed. Though her degree was not in medical sciences, Harley’s eyes were still tools, cut sharp like scalpels. She took Ivy’s face in both her hands, staring into green eyes tough as a beetle’s shell.

            “I just mean it’s so like you,” Harley spoke quietly, planting a lazy kiss on Ivy’s chin, trailing from there, along the jaw, to the ear again. “A book about a little girl, left lost and alone, only feeling safe through finding a secret little garden? I can’t think of a sweeter thing than that; I can’t think of anything sweeter than that being your fave. It’s so you.”

            “I can,” she moved Harley’s face to hers, nose to nose, “much sweeter.”

            “Kisses, kisses!” Harley squealed in a whisper, smiling to her bones as Ivy pulled her in for a kiss. Always so gentle, always so hesitant, always as if asking for permission. _May I? May I?_ Each touch of Ivy’s lips asked. Harley hoped her lips, her tongue, only spoke the word _Please._ “I missed this,” she sighed into Ivy’s mouth.

            “We just kissed a few hours ago,” Ivy shook her head.

            “Nah, I mean…” Harley bit her lip. “You’ve been so… _busy_ lately. I feel like I never see ya anymore. You’re always pruning some plant or passed out from working so hard.”

            “Getting to see me isn’t all that great, daffodil.”

            Harley sat up, arms folded.

            “What?” Ivy moved backward, pressing her back to the arm of the couch.

            Harley bit her lip. “Feels like ya just said…I mean, if ya say that me getting to see _you_ isn’t all that great…feels like ya don’t much care…’bout seein’ me…”

            “Oh,” Ivy breathed softly, a hand drifted upward hesitantly, hovering there as if it had lost its nerve. “Oh, no. You know I didn’t mean it like that, sweet. Right? Harl?”

            Harley wanted to reply back with something that meant she was fine, but a whimper made its way out instead. The bite of her lip strengthened and tears slipped out of their own accord. Sadness and anger, two things that Harley cried because of, and they were both happening now.

            “Harl—”

            “I have issues, Red,” Harley stated firmly, yet unevenly from the sobs choked off in her chest. “We both do. I get it. I’m clingy. I’m a puppet with its strings cut away and now they’re getting all tangled up around ya. I’m strangling you. I’m hurting you. It’s what I do.”

            “You aren’t hurting anyone, Harley,” Ivy’s tone was astounded. How could she be so surprised, as if she didn’t know where this was coming from?

            “I didn’t _ask_ to be this way, y’know. I’m all broken inside of myself; circuits don’t work right from too many bumps to the head.” Harley shook her head, eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Y’know, I was looking through some old stuff of mine, found some notes from college. I sounded so sure of myself, back then. There were no questions in my notes, no doubts in my theses. What happened to me?”

            “You’re still confident, Harley.” Ivy said hotly. “Just in different ways, now. I’ve never seen someone stand up for people they care for the way you do. No one can stop you once you set your mind to something. You know why you stopped being like you were before. You know who did this to you.”

            “Wasn’t just him, Red.” Harley locked eyes with Ivy. “It’s you, too.”

            There it was. The look someone gets when they’re slapped across the face, all over Pam’s expression. It was an old angst, an old problem, an old argument.

            “We’re both sick,” Ivy murmured quietly, her gaze distant. “Being bad to you…being bad to everyone…my manipulative nature…it’s all sickness. The kind you went to school for. No one _wants_ to be a monster, Harley.”

            Pain soared with panic through Harley. “I ain’t sayin’ you’re a monster! You ain’t a monster! I’ve seen what a monster is, and what a monster can do and you ain’t him. You don’t got the smile. You’ve got…you’ve got a softer one. Your smiles don’t scare me.”

            “But you still hate that I can be bad,” Ivy stated, “bad to you in the way I’m bad to others. Right?”

            Harley said nothing.

            Ivy, leaning up, rested her head into Harley’s neck, swiping a thumb across a trail of tears on her cheek. Harley drew in a shuddering breath and ducked into Ivy, into her touch. They held each other in silence, in the darkness of shadows cast from the lamp in a far corner of the room. Quiet was always louder, larger in the dark.

            “I’m going to tell you a secret,” Ivy whispered into Harley’s skin. “Do you remember the night of our first heist? That immunization I gave you?”

            “Yeah, the reason I can touch you right now, right?” Harley sniffled. “Hurt like a bitch.”

            “It didn’t,” Ivy chided softly. “Why would I make something that would give someone immunity to my greatest protection, Harl? What reason would I have to concoct something that would let someone get close to me, enough to touch me, spend time with me? Why?”

            She was leading her, prompting her. Ivy was the only person who liked to prod intelligence from Harley, and cleverness.

            “Because…you wanted someone to get close,” Harley said with a tone of dawning. “You wanted…you made it…hoping someone would be special enough…”

            “Dear enough,” Ivy interjected.

            “…To let in your world. But…why me? Why give it to me? Ya hardly knew me. Why would you…?”

            Arkham’s dark halls flashed through Harley’s mind. She remembered them with the echoing clacks of heels on marble floors, the weight of glassed on her nose. She remembered the weeks before her descent into further madness with vague detail, her time before being ensnared by Joker blurry and dizzying. She didn’t like to think about those days, of being a psychiatrist and having nothing to show for it. It made her feel stupid, honestly. It made her feel ordinary.

            She could recall speaking to another patient. A woman, with red hair.

            “You made it for me,” Harley breathed. “I was the only…the only human you knew for _sure_ …Red, how long have you loved me?”

            She could feel Ivy’s skin grow hot against her own. Harley pulled her face out of her neck to see a big, bright blush blooming across Pam’s face like a summer rose.

            “Don’t just come out and say it like that!” Ivy tried to pull away, but Harley wasn’t having it. Harley rubbed her nose vigorously against hers. “I don’t think I loved you right away. I just remember thinking…”

            “What?”

            “I remember thinking that out of all humans,” Ivy said, “I would let you into my garden.”


End file.
